When you think about where people with intellectual disabilities live, what do you picture?
Do you see a woman in a wheelchair living in her own house? Do you see several hundred people with disabilities living in a dorm? Do you envision a couple of guys in an apartment with a live-in caregiver?
If you picture a small, segregated home with several people with disabilities living together (whether they like each other or not!) with round-the-clock staff, you are probably like the majority of people. While the large congregate institution is starting to decline, the group home remains the living situation that most people know.
So, when I tell people, “We don’t have any group homes in Southwest Colorado,” it comes as a shock. Where do people with disabilities go?
Let me start with some background.
For most of our modern history, people with disabilities were relegated to state-run institutions, which in the 20th century became notorious for overcrowding, malnutrition, abuse and general poor conditions. Although the idea of community living for the institutional residents evolved in the 1920s, it wasn’t until the ’70s and ’80s that any concerted effort came to offer real alternatives to institutional living. Today, fewer than 100 residents of Colorado with disabilities live in an institutional setting.
In Colorado, there are three main community living alternatives within the formal system of supports.
The first is the group home. A group home is officially an agency-owned and operated residential setting that serves four to eight individuals with disabilities. People in group homes may or may not have their own room, and they often have little choice about who else lives in the home. Most group homes have one to two employees on site throughout the day.
Group homes tend to be structured, but for that structure, they sacrifice personal choice. They also depend on having a group of six to eight people in a community with compatible temperaments and interests, or it could be a miserable situation for everyone! For these two reasons, group homes have not been used in our area for over 20 years.
The two alternatives to group homes are individual residential services, which are available in Southwest Colorado. In the host-home model, a person with a disability lives with a host family and is fully incorporated into that family’s life. This is currently the most frequent setting across Colorado and in our region.
The other individual residential services model has been termed a Personal Care Alternative. The individual or the agency buys or rents a residence in the community, and that individual has access to the amount of care he or she needs. For some, it may be 24-hour care. Others only need someone to come in a couple times a week to help with home tasks. The support is based on the individual.
Additional thousands of Coloradoans with disabilities are living independently or with family members.
When you picture the living situation for a person with a disability, picture the house next door. It might even be true.
Tara Kiene is the director of case management with Community Connections Inc.
